TCAHR - Better Living Through Memetics

Issue 4
The Gothic Right to Bitch                           11/01/00
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Some fool from Austin, hereby known as Timmy the Goth(TM),
took our bitching against Goth way too seriously on the
Freakland mailing list.  Our protagonist, filled with his
usual sarcastic venom, wrote back:

Sisters!  Brothers!  Virtual citizens of Freakland!  Lend me
your multi-pierced ears...

I must protest this attack and breaking of our most sacred
Gothic tradition: the tradition to bitch.  From the times of
the most holy king of the Goths, Berig, to our current lord
Andrew it has been our right as descendents of the good and
noble people of Gothiscandza to analyze our culture and find
fault.

It is not the highest achievements which tell the tale of a
culture, but the lowest common denominator which describes
the state of one.  We should not look upon the achievements
of our greatest heroes such as Maximinus, Africanus, or
Siouxsie as proof of our worthiness.  We must instead look
introspectively at those baubles of our culture which revel
its true nature: Magazines and Web Sites.

In this we find the elitism, sexism, classism, and racism
which has plagued us and made us weaker since the time our
people first split into the separate communities of the
Visigoths and the Ostrogoths.  It shall continue way beyond
our modern day division which created the hydra of New
Romantics, Mansons, Industrialites, and Ravers.  Our
stringent and fascist reliance on symbolism has divided us
and the cure is we must not take ourselves too seriously.

Without the traditions of bitching, we will be unable to
find the cracks in our collective armor and shall one day
be stricken down in these places.  The differences in our
opinion is what has created our culture; dissatisfaction
with stasis is the first step toward advancement.  The
Goths, as a whole, must evolve or die.  Even now our great
warrior-poet ancestors, the Punks, have become powerless as
the symbols which defined them now crush them.

We must be strong in these times for the enemy has already
begun mocking us in his propaganda films such as Blair Witch
2, Urban Legends, and their immortal classic, Dracula.  They
have stolen our culture and made it their own.  Was it not
the tradition of bitching and our dissatisfaction which
sustained us as a people during the Hun raids?  Do we now
toss away tradition due to personal offense?

What would our twin gods of war and darkness, Mars and
Murphy, think of us now?

I thank you all for allowing me to address the senate.  May
the state of Gothiscandza be blessed.
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tcahr@hotmail.com                             Copyright 2000